Incumbents tend to gain solid electoral advantage in many voting systems. In this study, we examine the relationship between salaries prescribed to politicians and the incumbency advantage by exploiting a political wage reform and data from close elections in a proportional semi-open list system in the Czech Republic. We show that higher salaries reduce the average incumbency advantage, as they increase the probability to run again for previously non-elected candidates much more than for incumbents. Still, we find that higher wages improve candidate selection, especially by encouraging repeated candidacy from university-educated incumbents. Higher wages also improve relative positions of re-running incumbents on candidate lists compared to previously non-elected re-running candidates. Our results overall suggest that incumbency per se changes the relationship between political wages and candidate selection.

在许多投票系统中，现任者往往会获得稳固的选举优势。在这项研究中，我们通过利用政治工资改革和捷克共和国半公开名单制度中封闭选举的数据，研究了向政治家规定的工资与在职优势之间的关系。We show that higher salaries reduce the average incumbency advantage, as they increase the probability to run again for previously non-elected candidates much more than for incumbents. 尽管如此，我们发现更高的工资可以改善候选人的选择，特别是通过鼓励受过大学教育的现任者重复参选。Higher wages also improve relative positions of re-running incumbents on candidate lists compared to previously non-elected re-running candidates.